


The Tie That Binds Our Hearts

by Kivrin



Series: Through All the Length of Days [6]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: F/M, Knitting, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 02:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11244906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/pseuds/Kivrin
Summary: Six years, and nine ounces of wool.





	The Tie That Binds Our Hearts

When they were first walking out, in 1940, Sam bought herself an _Essentials For The Forces_ knitting leaflet and the requisite nine ounces of wool in RAF blue. She asked her mother to post her the proper needles, and set to work to knit her young man a pullover. 

She’d never been much good at knitting, but a jumper surely would be less fiddly than socks, and most of it ought to be fairly straightforward. She did have to try three times to cast on, but after that she made such good progress on the ribbed waistband that she began to think she’d be finished well before Christmas. The nubbly pattern for the body of the pullover proved a challenge, though. She had to keep track of the right and wrong side, which wasn’t easy with dark wool, and when she tried to knit while listening to the wireless she always made mistakes that she had to pick out. And the project was too bulky to bring back and forth to the station with her, even if she’d been bold enough to face questions about who she was knitting for. 

By stir-up Sunday she had only worked six inches of the back panel. She put it aside and bought Andrew a set of cufflinks. (They weren’t new - she got them at the St. Clement’s jumble sale - but they were good.) 

In the winter, after he left for Debden, she picked the jumper up again and worked diligently for a few months, finishing the back panel and starting on the front, but as spring wore on it was hard to feel any urgency about it. Even as the evenings grew colder in the autumn of ‘41, she only looked guiltily at her workbag and told herself she’d have to do more tomorrow. 

When he threw her over she unraveled it all. Margaret, one of the girls who shared her digs, found her frowning tearfully over a tangle of wool, and talked sympathetically while helping Sam wind the yarn around a colander and steam it to get rid of the kinks. “Jumpers take such a time when you’re only knitting in the evenings,” Margaret said. “I don’t know a girl who’s given one to the same man she started it for unless they were married when she began it.” When the wool was dry Margaret helped her wind it, and Sam packed it and the leaflet away with her out-of-season clothes in the box room.

She thought briefly of starting a pullover for Joe - he always complained of being cold - but she couldn’t help remembering Margaret’s words and feeling just a trifle superstitious about starting another one. And blue wouldn’t have matched Joe’s khaki, in any case.

After Sam was ill, during the dismal week of post-hospital convalescence that Mr. Foyle insisted on before he’d let her come back to work, sheer boredom made her dig out the leaflet again and consider starting a pair of mittens. It would be something to do with her hands during Joe’s kind, awkward visits. But sense prevailed, and she packed the wool away with some naphthalene, and forgot it.

She did not think of it all through the long busy autumn of ‘42, through the bleak December when Jane Milner was killed and the grim January when the station was shorter-handed than ever after losing Constable Peters. She didn’t think of it while Mr. Foyle was so ill that she steeled herself to write to Andrew about him, nor when Andrew turned up exhausted and worried in the middle of the night. Not even as Mr. Foyle recovered and she and Andrew hesitantly lowered their defenses towards each other, not even when she kissed him shamelessly in the Parade before he went back to Debden. 

She forgot it until the bitterly cold winter of ‘46, when they were not yet six months married and she was just beginning to suspect she might be pregnant. They were minding the house in Steep Lane while Mr. Foyle was in America, but Andrew was slaving to finish his degree and so Sam had whole weeks on her own while he was up at Oxford. She found the wool when she was turning out boxes she’d brought from Lyminster, and she started a scarf for Andrew. Whether from the work or the traveling or simply the lingering effects of the sinusitis that had ended his flying career, he had a whole string of terrible colds, and it was good to have something to do when he was away and not feeling well. Knit two, purl two, every row: she could do that between conversations at SSAFA, or standing in a queue at the shops. She only worked on it when Andrew was away, but even so, it went so quickly she was almost sorry when she was done. 

Andrew said he was never as miserable once he had that scarf. Sam said it was March when he started wearing it so the worst of the season was over in any case. All the same, she never saw him wrap it around his throat without a little burst of warmth in her own chest at the sense of all those memories spun into nine ounces of dark-blue wool. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can see the Essentials for the Forces knitting leaflet at the Victoria & Albert's website [here.](http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/0-9/1940s-knitting-patterns/)
> 
> The title is from the hymn 'Blest be the tie that binds,' text by John Fawcett, often sung to the tune Dennis. 
> 
> This was previously posted on Tumblr and FFN.


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